Ancestry.com Adds Atlanta Federal Penitentiary Records
Notorious train robbers, mob bosses, “butter imposters” and financial schemers are among the infamous outlaws who appear in a unique collection of federal prison records we just added to Ancestry.com.
Provided by the National Archives at Atlanta, the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary Collection (1902-1921) spans two decades and consists of more than 14,000 inmate records documenting some of the worst criminals in U.S. history.
Some of the most common offenses perpetrated by Atlanta Federal Penitentiary inmates, and documented in this new collection, include illegal distilling, tax evasion, counterfeiting, mail fraud and mail theft.
The collection also contains records documenting some more curious kinds of crimes, including:
- Butter Imposter – Several individuals in the collection were sentenced to federal prison because they violated the “Oleo Margarine Act,” which made it a crime to produce margarine that looked too much like butter. Beginning in 1916, John R. Seymour spent 19 months behind bars for violating the Oleo Margarine Act.
- Bad Seed – One individual, David A. Keys, spent more than three years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary because of “scandalous conduct tending to the destruction of good morals.”
- Lead Foot – In 1915, Charles Arnett was sent to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to serve 19 months of jail time for “joy riding” in Washington, DC.
- Youngest Prisoner – In 1905, twelve-year-old Preston James was sentenced in Jacksonville, Fla., for embezzlement of U.S. mail, and went on to serve a 2-year prison term.
The first residents of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary arrived in 1902. Because only three federal penitentiaries existed at that time, each served a large region of the country. Criminals tried in Eastern and Southeastern states including New York, Washington, DC, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Florida were often sent to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to carry out their sentences.
Check out the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary Collection to see if there’s a notorious character in your family tree.
Previous Articles
Reminder about tonight’s webinar on Search Strategies
Hi Everyone,
I’d like to remind everybody that we will be running a free webinar on the best Strategies for Searching Ancestry.com this evening at 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
This webinar is designed for beginning to intermediate members of Ancestry.com. To attend the webinar, please register here.
We’re delighted that we already have more than 10,000 registrants [...]
More Than 400 Years of London Church Records
Did you know that until 1763, you only had to be 12 (girls) or 14 (boys) to marry in London? That 20% of London’s population was killed by a second Black Plague in the 1600s? That during the first year of WWI, marriages in London increased by 32%?
In the October newsletter we featured a new [...]
Scheduled Family Tree Maintenance (13 October, 2009 from 11:00 – 11:30 PM MDT)
Please be aware that the Ancestry.com Family Tree Service will undergo scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, 13 October 2009, from 11:00pm through 11:30pm Mountain Daylight Time.
This maintenance will support the continued growth in Ancestry Member Trees traffic.
This tree service downtime will affect Ancestry Member Trees, OneWorldTree, some portions of My Canvas, the sections of the Home [...]
It’s never too soon to start a MyCanvas calendar
As I was looking up at the wall by my work desk, I realized that I had never made a fun calendar for work. Crazy as I have made many calendars for home and for gifts. Instead, I see a blank wall with only a single picture from my son that says “I love you, [...]
Best Strategies for Searching Ancestry.com
Hello everyone,
The search team is excited about our free online webinar about searching Ancestry.com on October 14th at 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. In this webinar, we will show you the best strategies for searching Ancestry.com’s thousands of databases. Improving your search strategies will help you to find more information about your ancestors.
It can take [...]
Ancestry.com Announces New Washington DC Scanning Facility
We are pleased to announce an expansion to our relationship with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that enables us to digitize NARA record collections at a new Ancestry.com facility in the Washington, D.C., area.
Since the signing of an agreement in May 2008, we have worked with NARA to digitize historical records collections on-location [...]
Family Tree Maker: Webinar Recap
Hello Everyone,
We want to thank you all for your questions and participation in the webinar for Family Tree Maker 2010. We had a great turnout, with about 2,000 of you participating live with us that night.
We answered as many questions as time permitted, and we’re sorry if we weren’t able to get to yours yet. [...]
DNA results update to new industry standard
Ancestry.com DNA has recently updated a Y-chromosome DNA test marker name and its allele value to comply with a recently released industry-wide recommendation by the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG).
One of the markers in our Y-chromosome DNA test has changed names from “Y-GATA H4.1″ to “Y-GATA H4“. The allele value of “Y-GATA H4″ has [...]
A Mac or Not a Mac? Ancestry World Archives Project
That is the question that often arises when we announce new projects or a new tool update for the Ancestry World Archives keying tool.
I acknowledge the frustration our Mac users in our community experiences when Ancestry produces products that are not Macintosh compatible. While we do not have anything new to announce for our Mac [...]
Welcome to the Ancestry Blog!
Here you will find informational, and sometimes fun, posts from the folks behind the scenes here at Ancestry. We hope you’ll notice just how passionate we are about family history and about the products we're building to help connect families over distance and time.
